Max, great questions and I'm sure there is data our there on sensors sold, I can get MEMS sensors sold going back to their infancy but you wanted all the way back to 1900. There are a few experts out there who can weigh in here, I will ping them to respond.

Hi David -- it's GREAT to "see" you here!!! Now I'm wearing my happy face :-)

I know it's impossible to say -- but I would love to know how many regular (non-IoT) sensors have been deployed since say 1900 -- how many non-IoT sensors are in the world today -- how many IoT sensors are in the world today, and in what year do we expect to have 1 Trillion active IoT sensors?

The semiconductor equipment industry should be excited about the Internet of Things. Everyone in the industry should. Kaivan Karimi, Freescale's IoT guru, told me recently that when the IoT cranks up in a few years, there will be over 100 billion microcontrollers shipped each year, up from about 10-15 billion this year. That's a serious increase in chips. They'll need a lot of new equipment to build those.

A trillion sensors are one scenario, but a trillion organized sensors or much more intersting. The vast majority of these sensors are going to be servicing devices which are either not connected or do not publish the data from their sensors in an available way. Social media is starting to change this, making it popular to post information that is more rich in sensor readings, and companies like Google are making great strides in harvesting that information. You also have to wonder how far along the NSA and other government agencies are in doing that as well.

It is great to know that printed sensor on skin like tatoos is already a feasible technology!! Days are not far when the imagination of fully functional artificial robotic limbs could be integrated with the bodies of the needed. But surely it will help medical science (or rather medi-tronics science :) ) a lot!

How does the sensor printed on skin communicate with the monitoring device...or how the monitoring device gather data from these sensors?